Read and comment on this story from the Boston Globe that Jordan's crackdown on Islamic opposition groups, culminating in a raid on a southern town earlier this month, threatens to trigger an extremist backlash in a country already tense over a possible war involving one neighbor and an intifadah roiling another, analysts say.

This is the backdrop against which the Peace Corps announced it was pulling its 40 volunteers out of Jordan and the State Department authorized the departure of nonessential personnel from the US Embassy following the killing of an American last month.

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Extremist backlash in Jordan feared

By Jill Carroll, Globe Correspondent, 11/24/2002

AMMAN, Jordan - The government's crackdown on Islamic opposition groups, culminating in a raid on a southern town earlier this month, threatens to trigger an extremist backlash in a country already tense over a possible war involving one neighbor and an intifadah roiling another, analysts say.

Reflecting security concerns, the Peace Corps announced yesterday it was pulling its 40 volunteers out of Jordan. On Friday, the State Department authorized the departure of nonessential personnel from the US Embassy following the killing of an American last month.

Troops and riot police stormed the town of Maan on Nov. 10 with a level of force rarely seen in a country known for its peacefulness. The government said it was looking for a militant gang accused of crimes from robbery to drug smuggling. But many Jordanians say they believe the operation, which ended in five deaths and about 70 arrests, was politically motivated.

''The government wants to send a message to the citizens of Maan and the whole of society that it will not accept extremist actions,'' said Hani Hourani, a political analyst and senior director of the Al Urdun Al Jadid Research Center, a think tank in Amman.

Opposition groups also condemn a series of new laws that allow for elected officials to be replaced with government-appointed ones. Many of those positions had been held by members of Islamist groups or other critics of the government.

The changes signal a concerted effort to limit the power of militant and moderate groups and continue a 10-year trend of opposition groups being slowly pushed to the fringes of government.

Labib Kamhawi, a political analyst in Amman, said growing instability in the region has the monarchy worried that opposition groups could use the tense environment to foment unrest.

''Under King Hussein, the regime was in the mood to court various groups, especially Islamist groups,'' Kamhawi said. However, the new administration of King Abdullah II ''did not look at these groups with the seriousness and respect they expected.''

Kamhawi said Hussein, who died in 1999, needed the support of the powerful Islamist groups to fight communism. Now the West's focus has shifted from communism to Islamic radicals, making the groups a liability for Abdullah.

In addition, Abdullah sought to modernize Jordan and viewed the Islamists as part of the past. The Islamists who had once been coddled and brought into power by the monarchy now became opposition voices.

The government's approach had seemed to be working. Jordan, a key US ally, was an island of calm and relative stability as strife swirled in the countries around it. But then a senior executive of the US Agency for International Development was shot dead in front of his home in Amman Oct. 28.

Authorities say they don't know who was behind the shooting of Laurence M. Foley, or whether it was a terrorist attack. But the killing sparked talks about growing extremism fueled by anger at the West for not resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and talk of war in Iraq.

''There is an antiwestern sentiment spreading throughout the Middle East because of the Palestinian [conflict] and the suffering of people in Iraq,'' said the government spokesman, Mohammad Adwan. ''Some of the groups will use the sentiment to stir up trouble.''

Kamhawi said: ''The government is worried about one factor, the unknown.'' No one knows what will happen between Palestinians and Israelis or in Iraq, he said, and ''any wrong move on either front may lead to instability in the region and in Jordan.''

Aside from the action in Maan, opposition groups are angry over new laws that allow the government to pick mayors and members of city councils, seats previously dominated by Islamists. This particularly angered the Islamic Action Front, Jordan's largest opposition party and the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist group.

''These laws took their place in the country without permission from Parliament, strengthening the power of security [forces] in the country,'' said Abdual-Latif Arabiyat, head of the Shura Council, the decision-making body of the IAF. ''They are biased against us.''

Adwan denied that the government is trying to exclude particular groups from power. ''We have no qualms with any opposition that works within the system,'' said Adwan. ''No matter what the government does, they will oppose it. That is their right as long as it is peaceful.''

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